Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

An anonymous reader writes with this story about how a cashless society might work and how far-off in the future it is. "...We're not there yet, but a cashless society is not as fanciful as it seems. Recent research suggests that many believe we will stop using notes and coins altogether in the not-too-distant future. New payments technologies are rapidly transforming our lives. Today in the U.S., 66 percent of all point-of-sale transactions are done with plastic, while in the U.K. it's just under half. But while a truly cashless society is some time away yet, there is raft of groundbreaking technologies that will make cash a mere supporting act in the near future."

At the cost of anonymity for those who want to frequent such establishments without so much log file trail.
And there are plenty of other use-cases for people wanting their name decoupled from their deeds.
Not all of them are exactly bad, either.

Suppose there's 5 guys in different parts of town who each have 1000 un-opened pre-paid debit cards. I buy one and swap it straight across for one in a dept card anonymizer's collection, and then drive somewhere and do that again. It wouldn't be hard to make vending machines that would do this job, although some might prefer to trade with humans.

If they don't record the information though it is called money laundering. American Express got nailed with that in the 1990s for Traveler's Cheques they were letting people buy in the USA, lose in the USA, and then getting them recovered in a South American American Express location with no record of the who.

It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to anonymize them, by simply recording the transaction as "$50 Prepaid Debit Card" and not record which particular debit card number went to which customer. Also, if you anonymously acquire a prepaid debit card used for a transaction involved with some nefarious purpose, you still don't get picked up, because it may trace to that transaction, but it doesn't trace to you.

It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to switch to paper debit cards that had the amount of the card printed on the front. When you used that card, the cashier simply gave you lower-denomination of cards (say, a $5 debit card when you paid for a 5 dollar item with a $10 debit card).

Once this practice became pervasive enough, unfortunately the government would have to step in to create rules and regulations as to how all the printing would appear, and to prevent fraud. I suggest they mandate the use of engraved printing plates; green magnetic ink; and heavy cotton rag for the card. Oh, and to certain security features like holograms, watermarks, embedded plastic strips, etc.

My god, the level of convenience we'd enjoy would blow away any other form of paying for goods and services literally overnight.

the abolition of printed cash drives a wedge between 2 and 3. at the first whiff, run.

Shouldn't you be complaining about not being on the gold standard?

Seriously dude, your paranoid fantasy came true years ago, when we went off the Gold standard, and decoupled gold form the dollar.

It's all a game, and there was always too much paper floating around to make a gold standard serious. And as soon as we went total fiat, it didn't matter whether the money was printed, or a checkbook, or auto-deduct or credit card.

Maybe Somalia might work for you? I don't know how they handle money - mostly barter, I suspect - but it's probably more in line with your ideals. The rest of the world will just move on, and stand in line for their mark of the beast. The good news is they can pay for that online.

Yes, you had the only one. And it took a very unusual series of events for you to get a reliable Fiat.

It was a rare Wednesday that was also a National holiday. The regular crews were all off, and the temps were called in, but it was a Wednesday not a Friday so the temps weren't drunk. Being not drunk they remembered that they had played cards last night with the crew of a Saudi Royals yacht. This crew was all nubile Japanese girls who were taking a holiday from their work building Camries. The Fiat boys convinced them to take their shifts, and behold - the one ever reliable Fiat was built from 1969 through 1988.

15th of March 2013 Cyprus.
Overnight the banks were frozen, all electronic transactions ceased, the banks were closed, ATMs suddenly did not work (they were turned back on with severely restricted withdrawal limits later).
There four kinds of people
The cashless
Those who kept cash outside the system.
Those with other things like gold/silver/food/petrol.
The wolves who travelled into Cyprus to strip the cashless of their assets for fire sale prices.
The cashless starved, and had to sell their assets at fire sale prices, because they couldn't get any money, they couldn't use their cards AND they couldn't escape. Those who kept cash out of the system did not starve and could escape. Those who had other things like gold/silver/food/petrol ended up cleaning out the cashless of their assets and picked them clean as they had no choice as they had to buy water and food. Trevor a wolf went out there and started buying cashless peoples' Jewellery for about 5 cents on the Euro. The cashless had no choice but to sell to a wolf or starve.

The assumption that some sort of special merchant status will be required to accept non-physical payment strikes me as unfounded. Even today it's fairly easy for individuals to send money via ACH -- or a paper check, like individuals have used for years -- and it's not hard to imagine ways to make a similar process even easier and less dependent on banks.

Never say "never". The kid who occasionally mows my lawn has a smartphone. I can see a day, not too far off, when this is the customary mechanism for doing that kind of payment. As soon as the transaction cost goes down to negligible.

So yes, there may come a time when government-supplied currency tokens are obsolete for almost all transactions. That may not be in my lifetime, although the phasing out of postage stamps may happen in the next couple of decades. Illicit transactions may just move to barter.

Who said anything about a finance industry? It's almost like there needs to be a system of electronic money which can be transferd just by sending bits from one smartphone to another. These bits would be like coins. Ideally this system should be decentralised and not involve any financial institution.

These coinbits would seem to solve all of these problems. They just need a catchier name.

The point many people miss is that with modern technology there is no requirement for you to use local currency. You could use your phone to pay in Rubles or Pounds just as easily as in Dollars. What if you can pay bills in Bitcoins using your phone? Large parts of the economy might just vanish as far as the taxman knows. Big business has spent a lot of time/money/effort in not paying taxes. What if everyone does that? The ONLY thing required for this to happen is secure communications.

That's like saying "the ONLY thing required is world peace".What admins and engineers have known for a long time, and which people like Snowden provided evidence for is that secure communication is not a given, and highly unlikely to be an option for the masses.

If the government won't let people have a shadow economy they can't monitor or control, expect physical alternatives to take their place. There's plenty of precedence for turning to valuable metals when the currency cannot be trusted. And there are examples of governments banning both gold and silver trade as a kneejerk reaction, but that just moves the market to something else.

Any transaction that doesn't want to pay taxes moves to barter. This shit is a government wet dream. Talk about control! If you piss off the government in any way they flick a switch and you're done. Actually they probably just click an icon on a screen. Now you can't use your money, it's gone! I can see it coming though, it's inevitable.

Yup. It's also common to get discounts for cash. Some places like pawn shops, used bookstores, junkyards, and other businesses will always offer discounts over published or listed prices for cash, and those discounts are often much steeper than just the cost to the merchant of a credit card transaction, and sometimes are quite a bit more than the choice by the merchant to under-report taxable transactions would account for too. I suspect that in part it's a matter of the business having the money now, as opposed to having to wait until the end of the month to get paid. Plus there's always a possibility of messing up a credit/debit transaction, which can result in having one's account (and all outstanding revenue) put on-hold until the processor chooses to release it.

Credit/Debit works best for large companies where there's little to no haggling, and where the sheer volume of transactions allows that merchant to negotiate good terms with the processor, but they're still at the mercy of the processor as far as account and transaction fees are concerned, and then there's the other issue of security. Target, Neiman Marcus, and PF Changs are all going through that right now, and I don't doubt that it'll get worse as time goes on, and while "pin and chip" cards may help, I expect that someone will figure out how to steal through those too, and the cycle will just continue.

And then there's the personal sale angle. I'm not going to take paypal or have the ability to process credit cards for a yard sale or some crap that I'm selling through the classifieds or craigslist. Given how I'm mainly just trying to recoup something in the process of a sale, adding more hoops or steps will just result in my not bothering to sell junk anymore.

So you can audit and authorize where it goes. I can't audit a guy stealing cash from my wallet.

Audit all you like, you still might not get it back. Hell, they can't even stop most large-scale internet scams when you would think it easy to audit the trail.

A mugger could take at most about $50 from me (its equivalent - I am in the UK in fact, and in a rural area where muggings are almost unheard of). However a plastic card scam might lift about three orders of magnitude more than that.

TPTB can freeze credit cards, bank accounts, etc on a whim, but can't freeze a wallet full of $20s.

Actually, yeah they can. North Korea did just this...to all the money in everyone's wallet...when they decided that the black market had gotten too powerful. They demoted the value of the won [time.com] (their currency) by two orders of magnitude...and gave everyone only a week to change their currency in for the new notes, after which time the old notes would not be worth the paper they were printed on.

Now here's the part where you say "But that's North Korea!" right on the heels of everyone claiming that the reason to go cashless is because we're not really living in a free society...

If the US were to change the dollar like that, most folks wouldn't care. The vast majority of American money is held in banks, which would make the change automatically on their electronic balance.

The only thing affected by such a change would be large stockpiles of cash. For legitimate businesses, replacing the cash in circulation would be an annoyance, but not impossible. For most individuals, who would have less than a few thousand dollars in cash on hand, the change would mean just a quick trip to the n

Who? A court issuing a judgement, or the IRS seeking unpaid taxes? There is no Department of Government that simply decides anything. It's always the result of some bureaucracy, with a defined process for dispute resolution.

I owed them 37,000$. No explanations.

No explanations, or none that you understood? I've had the IRS come looking for money a few times, and each time it included an enumerated list of what parts of my paperwork they disagreed with. In typical government form, there was no colloquial interpretation, but to an accountant and tax preparer, though, all of the necessary information was there.

The only thing I was told was I'm supposed to have received everything by mail. Of course, I never received anything.

How did you get notice that you owed the money, then? Have you checked that the suitable department has your address correct?

I lost count how many time I called or went to talk to someone.

That's a mistake. Keep records of every time you talk to someone about the matter, and take notes on what they say.

Sometimes the guy I talk to says...

Which guy? Record names, ID numbers, or any other identifier. Those are important to track down exactly who has said what, and on what authority. I've had some matters resolved just by pointing different bureaucrats at each other, and letting them work out the disagreement internally.

Last year, the government froze all my accounts and stole my money.

"Froze" and "stole" are not the same things. Either way, get a good lawyer.

After talking to a lawyer, I was told this kind of cases could go on for a very long time and could cost me a lot of money.

...as can any lawsuit.

The advice was that I should forget about my money.

...I said to get a good lawyer.

The bottom line is that either your story doesn't add up, or you're rather incompetent with governmental matters. Find a suitable advocate for this matter (either a different lawyer for a judgement, or a tax specialist for an IRS dispute, etc.) and give them absolutely every piece of information you have. Record absolutely everything that transpires. Yes, it will cost you a significant amount of money now, because you've sat on this for three years, but I'd be surprised if it totaled more than $37,000.

The most important thing is to make sure that someone fighting on your side is an expert in the relevant process. If you work within the established process, the various governmental entities are actually very forgiving and understanding. You must realize that the actual humans involved don't really care about taking your money, finding guilt, or screwing you over in any other way. They're interested in following the process and closing disputes, so if you show that you're interested in doing things the right way, they'll often be happy to explain exactly what that is. You don't need to waste their time professing your innocence, or telling them how horribly wrong the Big Bad Government is for attacking you. Just find out what you need to do to resolve the dispute, have an expert on hand to verify the information and ask questions, then do whatever's appropriate.

No envelopes stuffed with cash makes bribing government harder to do without getting caught much harder. It means everything you do makes a paper trail somewhere. Granted the powers that be have an interest in hiding, but when you are the ONLY people hiding it makes you stand out.

There are a full range of benefits of paying with cash. Limiting the number of credit card transactions to make it easier to track proper and improper ones. Discounts that are available when purchasing with cash. The trades prefer to be paid cash and discount accordingly somewhat fair as their payment can not be tax deducted unless you can hide you home behind a business. It works when the power is out. It keeps perverse privacy invasive government agencies and corporations from tracking every single thing you do.

Cash isn't anonymous. Every time you spend cash it eventually gets scanned and the numbers sent to the government. You take cash from the bank, scan. The gas station deposits that money, scan. You might have paid a hooker with it, and then she bought cash- but if they can trace all the other money from the gas station to tourists then it's more likely it was you buying gas.

Uh, you take the hundred dollar bill from the bank teller, then you buy something with it and get change with smaller bills and so on. Notice how your original withdrawal gets lost in the noise?

No undocumented, untaxed, under-the-radar transactions will be tolerated.

You are joking, aren't you? Cashless money only forces the small people to pay taxes. Those who can afford a monaco citizenship will still go away untaxed.The governments should hunt the big money instead. But they know, that if they do, big money moves off, like in france (which did a far too exagerated tax), as it lives from and lives for its money (nothing bad, I would do the same). So instead they tax those for whom money doesn't have this big priority. No average rich person will leave a country only b

You let your child travel to the convenience store without adult supervision, without even a phone just in case? You child abuser, you.

Fucking NAZI. When I was growing up, all the kids wandered the neighbourhood without adult supervision until dusk and we turned out just fine. We also walked to the neighbourhood corner store for candy. Namby-pamby fascists like you are what is ruining society. We did not have cell phones either.

As someone who has had a recent issue with a certain major bank(they closed the account and sent cashiers checks to me for the balance. Waiting 2-3 days without money wasn't pleasant)...I will never go cashless. Relying on these financial institutions for every transaction is something I will not trust. I won't get into the whole NSA/FBI/etc. potential tracking of all my purchases.

As someone from the U.S. who just recently traveled in Canada, I have to say that I like their current currency system a lot. Using loonies ($1) and "twoonies" ($2) coins is nice as they can actually be used easily to buy useful things, which is the primary reason why (I think) dollar coins haven't really taken off in the U.S.

In Canada, parking meters, soda machines, etc.. take $1 and $2 coins. It beats having to feed a pile of small coins into a meter or machine, or trying to iron out and feed a frayed and mangled $1 USD bill into a soda machine and having it rejected. The coins are also fine for face-to-face transactions; they are not unusual. In contrast, Susan B. Anthony dollars in the U.S. can get you some funny looks and many vendors flat out won't accept them, legal tender or not. You can go buy a beer in Canada with the change in your pocket. The Canadian coins make small daily transactions simple.

In the U.S., getting change is a pain in the ass because you invariably wind up accumulating pennies which are a nuisance. You can't use them for tolls or in machines in most places, and toting around a pile of pennies large enough to actually purchase anything with is ridiculous. So you either start carrying a satchel of pennies around trying to pay exact change, or you toss them in a jar, spend time rolling them, and exchange them at the bank for larger denominations (yay! A trip to the bank just to dispose of pennies!). You can also use services like Coinstar, which takes a cut (yay! A special trip to dispose of pennies AND paying some money to a company taking advantage of the dumb system!). In Canada, prices are merely rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Sometimes it is a few pennies in your favor, sometimes it is a few pennies in their favor. On the whole it is a wash, and you would have to be a really miserly SOB for it to worry you.

Canada has cash pretty well figured out. It's not that difficult, U.S.!

I'm Canadian and I agree with you on all of these points. When I visit the US I find it annoying that a) your paper money is such crappy quality, and b) it all looks the same making it harder to tell the difference in my wallet. I always end up with a million $1 bills because out of habit I end up breaking 5's, 10's and 20's to pay for things. In Canada, up until 1996 we still had $2 bills before the toonie (the $1 bill was changed to a loonie some time in the 80's).

Similar in NZ, $1 and $2, and the smallest coin is 10c. However, we have something like 80% of point of sales transactions being electronic (off the top of my head), so it doesn't matter too much. This article is a bit of history really:)

Years ago I was at the Denver mint (where they make pennies) and I questioned the tour guide there about getting rid of pennies (as per Oz). For some reason this tour guide couldn't comprehend a world without pennies, and started bring up all sorts of straw men arguments about how consumers would be ripped off, and other things (which I can't quite recall now). It was weird.

But what is also weird is that the US has a $1 coin. But I think that I have only ever seen it in use in Chicago. Apparently USia

Don't get me started on pennies. The reason we still have them is mostly sentimental. If it were my choice I'd drop the penny AND the nickle, AND the quarter, introduce a 20 cent piece, and be done.

Dollar coin never took off because they kept making bills. Other countries that have dollar coins stopped making the bills, so the coin took over as the bills left circulation. The actual economics of the bill vs. coin in the US are quite interesting due to how well made our bills are and how long they last in ci

Wrong, they're made for circulation, they're just making sets with all the presidents, like they did with all the states and Washington DC on quarters.

No, sorry, but you are wrong here. The US mint is sitting on roughly a billion of these coins, minted in previous years, which may never see circulation because there is no demand. Thus, the mint is NOT minting any new coins for the purpose of circulation. Unlike quarters (which circulate and wear out and needed to be replaced, new designs or not), at current demand levels, the mint has enough dollar coins in storage to last for decades [npr.org].

Thankfully, the mint was able to stop this idiocy of minting new coins just to shove into vaults a few years ago, so now they are only producing new coins to sell as uncirculated coins for collectors (which they can actually make some money off of). Sure, the new coins CAN be put in circulation, but their primary purpose is to be sold for premium prices to collectors.

Interesting thing about the dollar coin is that it is in wide circulation in Ecuador (due to the dollarization of 2000 based on the hyperinflation of the sucre). It was odd seeing so many transactions with the US dollar coin there (parking, transport, food, etc), when I have almost never seen it in circulation in the US. It's actually odd just using US currency in a country that currently has a president with a measure of a anti-US sentiment and strong ties with Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

Actually, can you explain to me the benefits of a $1 coin to the user? Fine, it's more durable; I don't really care, I rarely accidentally destroy $1 bills, so that benefit accrues solely to the mint.

Umm, you do realize who pays for dollar bills to be printed, right? The US government, which is funded by your taxes. Dollar bills on average last less than a year in circulation before they are removed and destroyed (due to damage, etc.). Coins last years or even decades in circulation. There's a lot of debate over exactly how much we'd save by switching to coins, but the consensus is it's at least a few hundred million dollars per year. In the giant federal budget, this is barely a drop in the bucket, but it's something...

Why not? I was on a Delta flight the other day and the only way to purchase in-flight cocktails was via credit card. On another flight the same day, the same purchase could only be made in cash. I am not aware of any laws that require businesses to accept a certain form of payment, and why should there be? If a business doesn't accept cash (or credit cards, or chickens, or bitcoin) and their customers prefer that method of payment, it will show up in their bottom line. Why would the government need to intervene in such a transaction?

While cashless might make sense to a middle class with easy access to technology and banks, there is a significant percentage of the population does not have access to such things and they probably will not any time soon. As much as 10% of the US population has no bank access, no SS ID, no IDs of any type, etc.

Last week I swiped my card at a gas station pump before noticing the tamper proof seals had been broken. I have replaced the card, but while waiting for the new card I used cash. You tend to conserve more money when it is cold, hard cash instead of of just swiping a card. Less surface area for compromise as well.

Exactly true. Market research shows people spend more if they are using a CC. Part of the psychology is of course that cash you are carrying around is generally a more limited asset than your CC balance limit.

Exactly true. Market research shows people spend more if they are using a CC. Part of the psychology is of course that cash you are carrying around is generally a more limited asset than your CC balance limit.

While that's true, it's beginning to change, particularly for many younger people. I've personally always found cash easier to spend, because it wouldn't be in my pocket if it weren't available. Credit cards, though? I need to think about my bank account balances and charges for the month before using those. But I agree that most people aren't that careful.

However, the big game changer for younger folks is financial tracking software -- so now you can see instant balances changing whenever you charge or debit. With financial tracking software, the CASH becomes the "funny money," because it isn't tracked automatically.

That means that whatever money is in my wallet has already disappeared from my "accounting software," so it's basically already spent, as far as I'm concerned. I've talked to many people who feel the same way now... cash is now the "free money to spend" while credit transactions see an immediate visceral impact as you look at your moving balance.

And no, the cash is accounted for n withdrawal, it has not "disappeared".

I think you missed my point. Suppose you take $60 out from an ATM to cover miscellaneous cash expenses for a week (or two or whatever). That number is immediately deducted from your balances, so if you look at your checking account to decide what you have to spend for future purposes, the cash is "invisible." Moreover, if you want to track individual cash transactions, you would need to enter and itemize them manually, which frankly most people can't be bothered with unless they do a lot of cash transactions or use large amounts of cash.

So, if you use financial software, cash becomes this untraceable invisible part of your financial total (like credit cards used to be), while every other transaction will automatically update and modify your net worth. I'm NOT saying you CAN'T keep track of cash... I'm saying for people who don't use it very much, it's more difficult, and people don't bother.

The cluster of odd bills in my wallet has become sort of like the "change jar" that people throw their coins into. You don't quite know how much is there, because you don't need it or use it very often,, but it's probably less than $100, and if you ever need some, you can probably dig out a couple quarters as necessary.

That younger people cannot maintain a balance in their heads is no reason to dispose of cash in society for those who can.

I know that this is what TFA is about, but I never argued in my post to get rid of cash. I don't think that would be good at all. My post was simply responding to others who said that cash was easier to track in your wallet -- for previous generations, yeah, today... not so much.

1. Privacy is more important to me than convenience. I like the idea that I can go into a store and buy something without someone making a recording of it and tying it to me.2. The issue isn't to make the dollar go away, or even the penny go away. The issue is to fix the inflation.

"Lots of people think it will happen" means about nothing. People are HORRIBLY bad at predicting future trends. More so en-mass.

What people say they want and what they really want (and demonstrate by doing) are pretty much unrelated. So even if people SAY they want cashless, I doubt they'll actually vote that way when the rubber hits the road.

Here in Australia I recently opened a bank account including an attached VISA Debit card (lets me pay with VISA using my own money). When I did it, the bank didn't care about my financial circumstances or anything and I was able to open the account with a single dollar coin.

The only account fees I have paid since I opened this account was an overseas transaction fee when I bought something from overseas with the VISA and a fee (charged by the ATM operator) when I used an ATM not part of the RediATM network.I pay NO monthly fees and NO transaction fees for using RediATM ATMs, EFTPOS, VISA in Australia, bPay or internet banking.

No reason why a bank has to make it hard for people to get a bank account or charge huge fees, they just choose to because they are greedy.

I remember when banks made their money by lending out depositors money, and paid the depositors as well, absolutely no fees and they paid cashiers to interact with the public. Back then certain businesses such as banks had a nice steady income and profit, now they expect to make record profits every year and if their profits only increase with inflation they're a failure.

Banks love you using plastic. They tax every transaction. Paying with plastic costs you at least 2.5% and as much as 5% extra because the merchants must build that into the price to pay the banks for the credit card transactions. This is a hidden inflation. A hidden tax.

Banks also like it because they can collect data on your behavior and that is a salable product which makes them more money.

People point this out a lot, and it is very true, and merchants love to whine about it, but they never point out the costs of handling cash.

You have to count it into the till, make change, balance the till, count and recount your deposit, and then haul it to the bank to deposit and pick up your change order, or pay an armored car service to do it for you. And hope nobody robs you in the meantime, or slips you a bogus $50.

For cards, big stores don't even need to print slips for their records, it is all in the system. For small stores you can just staple the slips together by type and drop them in a box in case someone gets a stick up their butt and decides to audit you.

One of my clients made me get it to get paid, their accounting department was paying net 90 days and required all kinds of crazy insurance to get me paid through them. So paying with the department credit card was just easier. So when I setup the credit card account, they told me it would cost me 4.0%. Every month new and mysterious (to my account rep.) charges would show up: a fraction of a percent here, fixed fees there. He could never give me an explanation of what they all were, and they weren't consistent from what I could tell. I told them that those charges were ok with me as I was passing that along to my client, but it was hard to do that when I didn't know what I would expect (I was running around $10K a month through it for some other part time contractors and equipment). When the project was over, I couldn't cancel that account fast enough.

So I perfectly understand why some stores have a minimum charge or won't take credit at all, it's a big hassle and cost.

"The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. " "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

I remember that episode from childhood, and even then, it stuck out as communist propaganda. Even in the universe, it was obvious that the federation had currency (credits), politics, and played a lot of the same games the world governments do.

Ex. power blackouts like NY had last year, or ~15 years ago when New England and Ontario had a power outage for a couple days. Most things will shutdown anyways in those scenarios but still are businesses really not going to want to be able to sell things because their card reader isn't working? Or how about your wallet gets stolen, credit card gets hacked etc? With cash you might/likely have some around the house. How many people have a spare copy of their bank card and credit card and will it work once you report the other one as missing? What you are just going to not buy anything for 3-5 days while you wait for another one?

The other point of view is that cash is needed because the government is still all in our business. Get the government out of the morality game and the cash will more or less disappear on its own. In that way, cash usage is a proxy for government oppression.

The other other point of view is that a uniform means of economic exchange with no additional cost is public service that the government should be doing.

I agree that a common currency is a core government concern. I wasn't advocating that the government should be out of the currency business, just positing that cash usage probably has some correlation to government's interaction with your daily life. There are some pretty large cash payments taking place to avoid taxes, or because the government makes sure it is hard to use credit cards for your illegal transaction.

"Cashless" is also a giant vacuum sucking service fees back to the banks and so on. Retailers pay a certain amount per transaction to a payment processor, even if you the customer don't pay directly. Think that doesn't come out of your pocket in the end through higher prices?

Just imagine how much money you would have if you got a penny for every transaction conducted in every North American Wal-mart for just one day -- you could retire several times over and still afford fuel for your yachts!

Are we really in that much of a hurry to keep giving more money to the banks?

There is a non-trivial fee associated with cash too. Cash requires labor to move/protect it, can go "missing" much more easily than credit card transactions etc. Cards are probably still more expensive, but not by as much as you may think.

Think that doesn't come out of your pocket in the end through higher prices?

Of course it does. But there's not much I as an individual can do about it. So, actually this is an INCENTIVE for consumers to use credit cards, since at least with my card I can get a percentage back in whatever form of rewards (whereas cash only customers will just lose all of it). The only place where I have an incentive to pay cash is when merchants charge different prices for cash vs. credit, and there I generally would pay cash. (Of course, this assumes you never carry a balance on your card... an

"Cashless" is also a giant vacuum sucking service fees back to the banks and so on. Retailers pay a certain amount per transaction to a payment processor, even if you the customer don't pay directly. Think that doesn't come out of your pocket in the end through higher prices?

THIS. I can't believe everyone is so supportive of a cashless society when cash is the only transaction-free method of payment (also anonymous). Paying 3-5 percent convenience charge simply to not use cash boggles my mind. I often ask for a cash discount on large purchases and usually the merchant is quite eager.

I've had it several times in my life where my debit and credit card stopped working because of a glitch. Those few times if I didn't have cash on me, I would have been screwed because I got up-front services, like going out to eat or gas or I had to pay my electric bill that day or get cut off. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I need a way to keep living.

If a tampered vending machine takes my cash, it's my word against theirs that it's my money they stole.If they use my credit card details, I get the money back. The insurance for that is paid by the merchant fees. There is no cash insurance.

Writing the mag strip to a new card won't work for long anyway, since every time I put my card in an ATM machine, the mag strip is re-written.You can't reuse a chip or contactless authorisation, they're both one time only.

So you are the reason that a lot of stores have a minimum charge amount for credit / debit charges. The transaction fees charged to merchants are ridiculous and so are ATM fees. Until these fees are reduced, you will never see a truly cashless society. And that doesn't include those that have less trust of banks than they do of governments.